[OT] Determining Video Formats

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 08:21 -0400, James Pifer wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 22:26 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 16:16 -0700, Paul Lemmons wrote:
> > > I am looking for a way to look at an AVI file and see how it was encoded 
> > > with enough detail that I could reproduce the process using transcode or 
> > > mencoder. I have a media server (D-Link DSM520) that plays most videos 
> > > absolutely perfectly. Some, though, it has trouble keeping audio sync. I 
> > > would like to compare the videos that work without issue to those that 
> > > have issues to see if I can identify what the differentiator might be. I 
> > > should then be able to identify those with problems and re-transcode 
> > > them to look like the files without the problem. That is the goal, anyway.
> > > 
> > > I suspect this is real easy but I am just not finding it and I am 
> > > completely Googled out. Any pointers in the right direction would be 
> > > much appreciated!
> > 
> > The tovid package ("yum install tovid") has a command called idvid,
> > which might be at least part of what you want.
> > 
> > poc
> > 
> 
> I was/am in a similar situation trying to figure out a way to transcode
> videos for my son's Zune. So far the only tool that has worked is crappy
> MS Movie Maker. Anyway, I found this windows tool which I think is free:
> GSpot. Just google and it should be the first thing returned. 
> 
> I will check out tovid as well!

Note that most Linux transcoders are simply frontends to parts of the
'transcode' package, which has a zillion options and can almost
certainly do what you want if you can figure it out :-)

ffmpeg is also useful and somewhat simpler.

poc